


The Rogue and Her Lover

by RobberBaroness



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Assassins & Hitmen, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Harlequin, Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 22:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3746236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summoned to Transylvania for his skills as a librarian, Jonathan has already had more than enough of the wickedly decadent vampiric court. Though protected—for now—by the powerful Dracul family, he knows his very life depends on accomplishing the task he has been set. But perhaps the greatest danger Jonathan faces is his own desire for the darkly seductive Mina Murray, better known as the Rogue Assassin. And when he is implicated in a deadly plot, can he trust his lover with his secrets—or his heart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rogue and Her Lover

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the summary of the novel "Borgia Fever", by Michelle Kelly.
> 
> I've mashed up a few versions of Dracula here- Jonathan being a librarian comes from "The Horror of Dracula", Marya comes from "Dracula's Daughter", and the Dracul women come from the theory that Dracula's so-called brides were in fact his female relatives.

The library of the Draculs was almost grand enough to make up for the Draculs themselves.  Story upon story of shimmering golden shelves held up volumes from Greece, England, Italy, even Japan; more books than Jonathan had ever dreamed of seeing in one place since he first became a librarian.  If he could have been left alone in the library all day and night, his job would have been an ideal one.

Unfortunately, he also had to deal with the noble family who employed him.

Count Dracula, his mother Alexandra, his sister Violeta, his daughter Marya.  Every last one of them was, if not rotten to the core, than so steeped in poison that it was only a matter of time before they were entirely corroded.  These thoughts were uncharitable, and for the most part Jonathan could successfully push them to the side, but they always came back to him, along with the thought that he’d made a dreadful mistake in ever coming to work for them.  

He did not see the worst of it- stories of sacrilegious orgies or of screaming virgins dragged into the dungeons at night came to him second-hand- but what he did see was enough to make his term of employment feel like a prison sentence.  The number of rooms he was not allowed to enter were enough for a small house, and unlike Bluebeard’s wife, he really had no intention of provoking any of the Draculs to wrath.  They were bad enough when they were pleased with him.

(“You are so shy,” said Alexandra when she crept into his bed at night and set him off to screaming.  “Come dance with me,” said Violeta when she pulled him into her blood-soaked arms.  “How long do you think you would last on the road before my father caught you?” asked Marya when he tried to pack his things in secrecy one night.  And always, always throughout his nights he felt the Count watching him and reveling in his anxiety.)

He had planned to be back in his home country by this point.  But as soon as he’d seen what the Draculs wrote in their private library records, he knew they would never let him leave alive.

 

***

 

One misty night, Jonathan found himself being talked into a moonlit stroll in the castle gardens with his hostesses.  Taking them on all at once was usually safe (and it was Marya who extended the invitation- she was the least odious of the lot.)  He should have known that nothing ever came without a downside when the Draculs were involved, as the stroll quickly turned into a mobile interrogation.

“I imagine my son keeps you quite busy these days,” said Alexandra, “ever since he entrusted you with his personal documents.”

Jonathan offered what he hoped was a disarming smile.

“Well, if you can’t trust a librarian, who can you trust?”

Alexandra laughed as if he’d actually been witty.  There were moments when the Dracul women could seem almost beautiful to him- moments in which they seemed relaxed and content and well-satisfied- but they ended as quickly as they came.  In this case, the laugh changed into a smile that showcased her prominent canine teeth, a smile he knew was meant to scare him.  It did its job.

“Will he be needing you very long?  It seems to me that if you are to stay with us on a permanent basis, we must have some way of ensuring your loyalty.”

Jonathan’s blood ran cold.

“You’ll have to ask your son about that, my lady.  I only do what I am told.”

“A fine trait indeed.  Then surely you won’t object to-”

Whatever Alexandra was about to propose was cut off abruptly by an intruder. They appeared from the shadows without warning, so quietly that even the nobles (who had bragged so often of their extraordinary perception) did not see the black-clad figure until a silver blade had been unsheathed.

“For Quincey,” snarled a high, almost musical voice, and with one stroke the intruder separated Alexandra’s head from her body.  Violeta and Marya lunged into the darkness after the intruder, but Jonathan could only watch in horrified fascination as the severed head displayed a look of serenity...then crumbled, along with the rest of Alexandra’s body, to dust.

The intruder was not caught.

 

***

 

“That rogue assassin!  She’s a madwoman, whoever she is!  One of my brother’s cast-offs, I should imagine, driven to violence by grief and jealousy!  I have always told him that his taste for peasants would be the end of us.”

Violeta did not, Jonathan noticed, have even the smallest tear to shed for her mother’s death.  He saw fury and indignation, certainly, but no sense of loss.  True, he would not mourn the woman who had treated him so basely, but could she have been so wicked that her own children would not miss her?

Count Dracula was as stoic as ever, though the lines in his forehead were harder and more defined than usual.  His lack of outright rage was somehow even more frightening than blazing anger would have been.  Only at Violeta’s disparagement of his sexual tastes did he raise an eyebrow, and she seemed to catch herself mid-speech.

“I suppose mother could have had enemies of her own,” she said, reclining on a velvet chair.  “But if this castle was under my command, every guard who was on duty last night would be executed.”

“It is not under your command,” said the Count, and Jonathan crept as quietly as he could from the hall so that he would not have to bear witness to any negotiations.

 

***

 

The next time the assassin came, Jonathan was rereading the records he had once thought were so valuable, in which Count Dracula gloated about his crimes in a clinical, almost bored manner.  There were outlandish expense accounts, receipts of terrible orders commissioned, even mysterious lists of names- _Irena.  Sylvia.  Lucy._  Somehow those sections sickened him even more than the rest, though he could not explain why.

“Lucy,” he whispered aloud, wondering whom she might have been- and then he heard a sudden, startled movement behind him.  He turned about and saw the same figure from the night of Alexandra’s murder, and for a moment they stared at each other, unspeaking.

Even in the dim glow of the distant stars, he could see the hair pulled back so tightly was auburn, and her skin had a warm amber hue (in stark contrast to the pallor that had surrounded him since he came to the castle.)

“Are you going to give the alarm?”

“No.  I want-” what did he want?  “I just wanted to see you again.  To know I hadn’t imagined you.”

“I slew Alexandra Dracul in cold blood.  Are you not moved by that?  Have you no heart, Master Harker?”

She came closer to him, but Jonathan did not feel he was in any danger- far less than what his hosts offered, anyway.

“I have a heart, my lady.  That is why I wanted to see you again.”

“I am no lady.  Not anymore.”  The assassin was close enough that he could see her large brown eyes, and it shocked him that someone who had eyes so kind could be a killer.  She seemed to be judging his appearance as well, for when she finally spoke it was with satisfaction.  “And you are not one of them.”

Jonathan impulsively reached out to take her hand, but she shied away from him.

“Forget you saw me, Harker.”  And then she leaned in so that he thought she meant to kiss him, but instead whispered into his ear.

“My name is Mina.”

And with that, the assassin melted into the shadows.  It wasn’t until she was gone that he wondered how she knew his name.

 

***

 

The remains of Violeta were far more gruesome than those of her mother; while Alexandra’s body had faded into dust, her daughter’s remained fresh and bloody.  A wooden shaft had been run through her heart, after which her neck had been cut, and the floor where she lay was soaked entirely with blood.  Still, Jonathan thought in the moment before the servants carried her away, it was the first time he had ever seen an expression of peace and rest upon Violeta Dracul’s face.

The assassin- Mina- had been busy after she vanished from his site.

Although Violetta’s death freed him from yet another tyrant, Jonathan struggled within himself in the hopes of finding some amount of pity for her.  Having aided a murderess, he should have felt terrible guilt, or at least a sense of grim triumph, but all that remained with him was the image of Violeta’s face in death, as gentle as that of a child.  The only emotion he could feel when thinking of her was relief, for both their sakes.

The castle was in an uproar, and so Jonathan thought it would be appropriate for him to try and stay out of everyone’s way.  By the time he found an empty hallway, though, he realized the lord of the house had followed him.

“All men have secrets, Jonathan Harker,” said Count Dracula to his librarian.  “What are yours?  What made you look so furtive as you looked upon Violeta’s corpse?”

“I never once touched your sister voluntarily” Jonathan said, a touch of anger creeping into his words despite his attempts to remain calm.

“I did not accuse you of such.  And yet you knew nothing of the means by which she met her death?  Harker, you have amused me until now, but I will not be deceived.”

The count seized him by the throat, and he knew as soon as he felt the strong hands grasping him that no amount of struggling could save his life.   _So this is how I die_ were the last words Jonathan thought as he waited for the end to come.  Somehow, it did not.

“Unhand him”, came a voice from the shadows.  Mina stepped out of the darkness, directly behind Count Dracula, and wrapped her arms about him.

For a moment Jonathan felt a searing pain comprised of both jealousy and hopeless betrayal.  In the next moment he knew what was about to happen, and just barely dodged the spray of blood that came as Mina drove her blade into the Count’s heart.  Jonathan did not see whether his face took on the same look of peace as the others’ had, but when he looked up again at the assassin, he saw that her face was uncommonly serene.

“Rest now, Lucy,” she whispered.  “And may god have mercy on the souls of the Dracul.”  The formidable count was nothing but ashes now, outlining a man’s shape as if he had been improperly embalmed.  “If you are not one of them, Harker, might I offer you this chance to run away with me?”

“Gladly!” Jonathan exclaimed, but something about the name she’d said- Lucy- jogged his memory.  “Wait- the records!  They’re in the library, I need them!”

He expected Mina to argue with him, but she did not- the fact that they were important to him was explanation enough.  They ran hand in hand down the corridor to the library, and Jonathan practically flung himself forward to seize the dead Count’s writings.  He nodded to Mina, and she went to pry open the nearest window.

“I admire your dedication”, she whispered, “whatever you’re up to.  Now hurry, before they know he’s dead!”

Mina looked down the window to what lay below them.

“We can survive the jump.  Just follow me-”

It was then that Jonathan saw Marya Dracul in the corner of the library, quiet and subtle, watching them with what seemed to be amiable interest.  But although the sight of her nearly caused Jonathan to scream, Marya made no move to prevent his escape.  Jonathan and Mina leapt to the balcony below, and from there to the surface, and all the while the night stayed silent.

 

***

 

“There is a safe house for us.”  Mina looked at Jonathan with concern as he pulled himself up off the ground.  “Are you hurt?  The man who owns the house is a doctor-”

“I’ll live.  For the first time since I came here, I feel certain of that.”

She supported him when he stood nevertheless, and feeling the warmth of Mina’s body was like heaven to Jonathan.  He let her guide him through dark alleyways and into the back door of a house, where a few hushed words from Mina to a handsome dark-haired man was enough to allow him entrance.  For a moment, Jonathan worried that he might be Mina’s lover, but their exchange was more friendly than intimate.  Passage to England was discussed, Jonathan’s potential injuries from the fall were discussed (though once again he insisted he was fine), and the dark-haired doctor left them to make sure no one on the street had been following.

Jonathan and Mina sat down beside each other, holding hands in silence.  At last, Jonathan spoke the words he’d had to hide away since his arrival in the country.

“The truth is, I came here to spy,” he said.  “I have a friend- a Dutchman- who wanted information to combat them.  I was to find their records and escape, but it proved not to be so easy.  That’s why it mattered so much that I took them with us...even if it doesn’t matter anymore.  I imagine you would have done a better job.”

“Would I?”  Mina smiled wryly.  “Just a few years ago all my pursuits were scholarly.  I would never have thought this would happen…”

She averted her eyes.

“There are many who have fallen to the desires and rages of the Dracul.  My dearest friend Lucy had the misfortune to capture the Count’s eye.”  The words came slowly and softly.  “She’s dead now, along with a man who tried to save her.  That is all you need to know.”

“Must you return to finish off Marya?”

“Though I do not doubt she is as wicked as the rest of her family, she was not complicit in the crimes against the ones I love.  Do you wish her dead?”

“No.  I want nothing to do with the Draculs again, in life or in death.  I only want to go away from this place with you.”

“Remember all my crimes.  Have you no heart, Master Harker?”

“I have, and it is pledged to you.  To hell and beyond” he said, and kissed her at last.


End file.
